In general, identity documents such as passports having a substrate which comprises two image areas, having in each of these image areas a laser engraved image corresponding to the holder of the identity document, are known in the art.
In FR2975945, an identity document is shown, wherein the identity document comprises two image areas, having a first laser engraved image of a person in a first area, while a second image area is provided with a transparent window in which a second image of the person is laser engraved. Additionally, the window is provided with a security feature of variable data of the ID holder, which extends over said window. The image in the window is visible from front and rear sides of the identity document. Moreover, an holographic mark is disposed in the transparent area to provide an extra security feature making its fraudulent use and reproduction more difficult.
A Swedish passport comprising the features of the preamble of claim 1 is known in the art forming an identity document having a transparent window. This passport comprises a page with the holder data and images, hereafter referred as a holder page, having a first and a second image in a same plane in a polycarbonate substrate. In addition, these images are repeated as a perforation pattern in another area of the substrate. Moreover, the Swedish passport further comprises a transparent window having a lens structure, allowing an inspecting person to inspect any underlying adjacent page of the passport document including an image having invisible security data that can be viewed via the lens structure of the window. Viewing the underlying image through the lens allows viewing invisible data information by the inspecting person.
Moreover, in EP 1516749 an identity document is disclosed comprising a cover, a personalized sheet comprising a laser personalization item such as a picture of the identification holder and a number of personalized data, and a number of inner pages comprising a laser-produced identification number. The cover, the personalized sheet and the inner pages are hingeably connected at a folding seam area.
The known security documents have as a disadvantage that the holder pages can be subjected to complete replacement or change-out of said page, without leaving easily detectable traces of such unauthorised replacement of the original holder page, due to the fact that all the features presented in the holder page, are exchanged in their entirely.
Moreover, the prior art identity documents do not present any features that allow the inspecting person an easy way of verifying the authenticity of the holder page in the presented document without making an additional inspection of said document by means of tilting the identity document in such a way that the data presented in the holographic mark can be seen, or putting the identity document against a light in order to check that the holographic mark presented is the original holographic mark or that the other identity features presented are authentic.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to at least overcome one of the above mentioned disadvantages of the prior art. It is also an object of the present invention is to provide an identification assembly for an identity document that makes the unauthorised or fraudulent use or replacement of the holder page more difficult by providing a direct link between the holder page and different parts of the identity document.
It is also an object of the present invention to provide an identity document in which the correspondence between the holder page and the identity document can be easily detected by an inspecting person.
It is furthermore an objective of the present invention to provide a method of manufacturing an identity document in which the authenticity between a holder page and the document can easily be established.